Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Christological controversies in the first few centuries of Christianity often centered around ensuring that Christ was both fully divine and fully human. The reason, ostensibly, as to why it was important for Christ to have a complete human nature was the patristic quip, ‘That which is not assumed, is not sanctified.’ Of course, the early Fathers wanted all of humanity to be fully sanctified. Thus, wanted to make sure that Christology claimed that Christ was completely human (and divine).

But what about the female-ness of women? Was that assumed by the seemingly male Christ. Perhaps so. If women are homogametic sex (they have two X chromosomes) then Christ – being male – took on the heterogametic sex (having and X and Y chromosome) and thus women, too, were assumed, truly, as the X chromosome was assumed and thus sanctified in the male Christ.